Good company

There’s a little brown fence lizard in the yurt with me this morning. He scoots around on the vinyl floor like a windup toy, belly lifted off the ground, tail in the air, almost on tiptoe. He tries to climb up the plastic trash bag where our trailer awning is stored, but falls off immediately with a soft thump. He rights himself, turns to face a swatch of sunlight coming through the window on the door, and presses his body down so flat in the warmth that he could be two-dimensional. 

When I get up to leave, I shoo him outside so I don’t accidentally squish him underfoot. Thirty minutes later I am back at my chair and hear his little feet again, and see that he has let himself back in through a gap in the canvas next to the base of the door. He runs a few inches, then stops; spurts forward again after a little pause, then stops—his movement reminding me of water squirting out of a hose when you run over it with the car.

What good company! I feel oddly comforted by his presence, though he couldn’t care less about me and my feelings. Maybe that is part of what I like about him—how he has an entire life that has nothing to do with me. How he is a world to himself.

It is also comforting to pay close attention to something outside myself; this brings me back to my body, to the present moment. Even better than lizards for this are snakes. Right now it is still too cold to see snakes every day, though there have been a few rattlesnake sightings over the past couple weeks. One of them was at the neighbors’ trailer, where the snake was having a staring match with the cat. Our neighbors took a picture, then moved it out of their yard. After they texted me the photo I asked where they moved the snake. “To your shower,” was the cheeky response. Nice neighbors. 

But seriously, though snakes cause anxiety on one level, they help my anxiety on another: in snake country I am completely present to my body and my surroundings. Whenever I walk anywhere, I watch the ground, notice where I am stepping, look at what is under each cactus, listen for the polite rattlesnake warning. After an hour or two of this I feel like I have been at a meditation retreat—can feel my body sink, my feet on the ground, my mind settle into a kind of alert rhythm.

Of course if I actually see a snake, that is a whole different story. But I guess everything positive has a downside. And right now, I am just glad to be alive enough to do the crazy leaping snake dance, to enjoy the lizard scooting in and out of the yurt, to be a part of this bright clear day.